Dear Square-Enix, FFXI Dev Team, and any others concerned,
I've given you my loyalties & my money for over 10 years now. I even bought every scrap of merchandise I could afford, importing CD's, books, stuffed animals, and shelling out the big bucks for both pieces of the Players' Collection jewelry.
I've made friends in real life and fallen in love with people I've met through this game. When the mobile "native app" was introduced, I thought there might be hope; that I might continue on my adventures with the character that I'd cultivated and nurtured for so long, even without MAJOR content updates, and even be able to use my phone to check in on things, even if in a limited capacity, whenever I was bored.
I could understand if there was content only accessible through mobile. I could have continued on. With this announcement, however, I realized that you just don't care anymore. No matter how much time, energy, effort, tears, and love that we players have poured into our characters, it just doesn't matter. The 1625+ quests, numerous missions, skills, experience, job points, weapons & armor of legend I toiled endlessly alone and with friends & against foes for, trusts I earned, the fellow I raised up, the gardens I tended, the house I so carefully decorated time and time again; they won't carry over.
And eventually, it WILL ALL dissipate into the ether as deleted data, since we all know that's where the PC version is heading with this decision to separate the data. The writing is on the wall.
There were so many possibilities still out there; a graphical "rebirth" of the game similar to what FFXIV underwent (using the FFXIV engine, even! Much of the monsters & other graphical data is ALREADY IMPLEMENTED in FFXIV!) would really have brought a resurgence of this game. FFXI players are nothing if not patient; patience was forced on us with HNM camping, experience parties, and almost the entirety of the content of the game in the old days.
But, the announcement of the decision to cease all major content, and on TOP of that to completely separate the mobile native app's connection to our characters is the final death knell that I hear tolling.
Truly, the "Rhapsodies" are Vana'diel's swan song.
Sincerely, and with a heavy heart,
M.B. a.k.a. "Rosalee" (Bismarck), formerly "Rosalie" (Seraph)